FDS FROM A STUDEBAKER

“Why do we always blame a bad mood on the bad weather?” she mused. Then added, out loud “It could be snowing apple blossoms in full sunshine and I would still be unhappy.” She turned from the window and its twenty-story view of Vancouver’s west end, and sighed. A week to Christmas, and she knew her low spirits would continue, as they always did, through the season.

It was during the holidays, two years ago, now, when all the joy of Christmas was erased for her. By two words. “It’s positive” should mean just that—positive, good, of value, etc. etc. But positive after a biopsy were the worst words possible. She remembered that she had smiled, and pulled Liam to herself, to her heart, and said something banal such as “It will be alright. We have each other.”
“That’s the problem, my darling.” Liam had stepped back, and smiled. “Not for long, apparently.” His soft Irish voice was overlaid by the clipped British accent he had acquired from years of education at ‘good’ schools. He held her hands, looked steadily at her, then pulled her to him, and held her head against his chest.
“I’ll come home,” she remembered saying. “I will be here. When you need….when you need someone….”
“No. You’ve waited a long time for your scholarship. Three-year doctoral scholarships are rare on the ground. Especially in music. You go. When I am better, I will come see you.” And that was that. Liam would not allow her to visit him, through his surgeries, through his radiation therapy, or his gut-wrenching and body-altering chemo-therapy. He stopped writing her, and would not accept telephone calls, probably because his voice had been affected by the radiation, and he did not want her to hear the changes in him. She loved him, still loved him, and she would love him changed in any way, but he could not accept that.

The buzz of her intercom interrupted her reverie. That would be Paul, on time of course. She said “It’s open,” into the machine, and pressed the 6 button to open the street door. After a strangely long time Paul arrived at her door, carrying a huge bouquet of winter flowers. He looked exactly as one would expect a professional conductor to look—smooth, well groomed, and wearing a long mohair black coat, way too warm for most Vancouver winters, but impressive, none the less. He beamed at her. “Are you ready? The cabbie said he could wait, but only for a few minutes.”
He handed her the bouquet. She noted that the flowers were white spider chrysanthemums, her favourite flower, with one red rose centred amongst them. She automatically bent her head, to inhale the floral smell of the blooms and the greenery. “How did you know these are my…” she began to say when Paul spoke over her.
“That’s why I took so long coming up. There was some delivery guy trying to find your name on the building address pad. He’s actually who rang your intercom. I told him I was coming up here, anyway, and could save him the trip.” Paul moved self-assuredly into the apartment, and smiled into the mirror over her gas fire. “I told him it was too bad the flowers would be wasted. That you are leaving tonight for two weeks in Budapest. With me.”
She laughed. “Well. You and eighty-three other members of the orchestra. I’ll put these in water, then get my coat.”
Paul continued to walk about the apartment, nodding approval of its décor. “Weird. Christmas must be hell on some businesses. More orders, but only temp workers. The FDS guy looked like death warmed over. And a bit too old to be a flower delivery boy. I guess beggars can’t be choosers during the Christmas rush.” He helped her into her coat. “And he was driving the world’s worst delivery van—a really old pick-up.”
White mums, sick delivery man, old truck. By now the array of strange coincidences broke through her conscious mind.
“Was he thin?”
Paul tied her scarf about her neck, letting his hands linger a little too long at her throat. “Who? The flower guy? Yeah, thin. Muscular enough, but thin in the face, as though he has been ill. You know how people…”
She interrupted him. “Was his truck a Studebaker?”
“What? I don’t know. It was old. How would I know a Studebaker from a Ford? Not my milieu, my darling.” That was said with the most pompous Paul-talk affectation, something he thought made him sound like a world-class conductor.
“The word ‘Studebaker’ is written in raised letters on the tailgate,” she all but hissed at him, as she ran to her patio doors, and through to her tiny balcony. She looked up the street, and there, now two blocks away, she saw the truck. It had to be his. Cherry red 1950 vintage pick-ups are rare in Vancouver’s West End.
She returned to her living room. “I’m not going.”
He smiled. “Oh. That’s just nerves, my dear. You will be perfect. And as fifth violin, you don’t even have to be perfect. Just move your bow in time, and no one will care.” He grinned. “The sound tech people can get rid of any noxious noise. But we do need at least one violinist who won’t break the camera lens. And that is you.” Now he actually giggled, at his own jokes, she guessed.
“You don’t need me. The orchestra does not need me. Move Mary Beth in, she can handle it. And she was included in the trip, anyway, as a potential substitute.”
“But then we really do have that problem with the camera lens. Mary Beth is not…ah, not you, my darling.”
She stomped towards her hall door. “I am not going.” He glared at her, as she indicated her open door. “You’ll never get on with any orchestra, again. You won’t even get an audition if I have any say….”
“I don’t care, Paul. Oh, and you might wonder about your own employment…darling!” she said as she slammed her door on his back.

Within a minute her intercom buzzed.
“Yes?”
It was Paul, of course. “Come on, Liz. Let’s be reasonable. What are you going to do? With the orchestra in Europe? With me in Europe?”

“I’m going home. Finally.”